Tiffany with his Tony.

“I’m always pleasantly surprised when anybody wants to see a production that I’ve directed,” said John Tiffany over the phone from Glasgow two days after the Tony Awards, erasing all traces of false modesty with child-like wonder. “I kinda go, ‘Oh, wow!’ I feel humbled and privileged that people are actually interested. I’ve a strong philosophical belief that works should be accessible and popular—there shouldn’t be obstacles to anybody being able to connect with what you do—but I wouldn’t say I have a mainstream commercial gene in my body at all. All I know how to do is tell the stories in the most accessible way possible.”

That, apparently, is enough: His Once was Tony king at the recent ceremonies, raking in eight awards in all—among them those for Best Musical and Best Director.

Music has always been a key component in Mr. Tiffany’s theatrical pieces, but never before had he attempted a musical per se—let alone one that could be considered “a Broadway musical” and would compete as such and actually win, leaving whole chorus lines of energetic evangelists and high-flying newsboys-on-strike in the dust.

Once has none of the gaudy trappings of traditional Broadway musicals. If anything, it wears its source like a flag—a quiet cult film of 2007 where Guy (a Dublin busker) and Girl (a Czech immigrant) meet, make beautiful music together but not, bitter-sweetly, a lasting relationship. Notable among the songs is “Falling Slowly,” a ballad of soaring urgency that won the Academy Award. The rest of the score, written by the two leads (Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova), is a haunting, surging dirge to the finish line. No glitz. No buck-and-wing. No 11 o’clock number.

Mr. Tiffany hadn’t seen the film when he was first approached about doing its stage facsimile. “I was with a friend back in Glasgow, who said, ‘You will love the music,’ so the first thing I did was download the album. Loved it. Then, I watched the film.”

One scene in particular triggered a childhood flashback and prompted him to do the project: “Glen takes Marketa to a party where everyone’s sitting around doing a song, and that reminded me of when my dad used to play in a brass band back in Yorkshire,” he said in the press room at the Tonys. “He would take me along on some very drunken evenings with his bandmates and everyone would do their song. There’s something about the way working-class men can communicate through music in a way they can’t in words.

“I thought, ‘Wow! I wonder if we could get that going in the play.’ That’s when I came up with the idea of having a bar on stage—the actors singing as the audience arrives, then the audience going on stage and being able to get a drink from the bar. That was my first thought, and that’s what happened. It took quite a lot of pushing to get that on Broadway—‘Audience on stage? What?’ ‘Liquor on stage? What?’—but we got that. It was an open bar on the first night at New York Theatre Workshop, and Alan Cumming asked me, ‘Is it not a free bar every night?’ I said, ‘Alan, you just think every bar’s a free bar. It’s like the Queen thinks everywhere it smells of fresh paint.’”

He told The Observer over the phone, “We were amazed 1) that the show transferred to Broadway in the first place, and 2) that we were nominated for 11 Tonys. I keep saying to the cast and company and creative team, ‘We’re so lucky in that we’ve made the show we’ve wanted to make.’ We couldn’t be prouder of it and the way it connected with its audience. Then, to get this kind of recognition and acknowledgement for doing our job is just fantastic.”

Mr. Tiffany’s voice broke a bit as he pressed on. “The best thing about it is that it made my mum and dad really proud. My dad’s a kind of quiet Yorkshire man. He doesn’t give away compliments too readily. I spoke to him the morning after the Tonys, and he said he’s never been prouder in his life, and that meant a helluvah lot to me.”

Nobody noticed, but, when Mr. Tiffany accepted his award, he was wearing his roots in his lapel—a dainty white flower from Yorkshire. He meant it as a sentimental salute to his parents, “who gave me the gift of music. They weren’t musicians—my mum was a nurse, my dad was an engineer—but they both had music as hobbies, and I grew up with music. There was something about Once and the process of working on it that made me really connect to home. I live in Scotland now, but I spend a lot of time in America, and I just thought I want to wear something from Yorkshire.”

Otherwise, the 40-year-old deputy director of the National Theatre of Scotland looked very much like a stranger in a strange land—which indeed he was, jetting in just for the awards and then back to Glasgow the next day. He was steering his pal, Mr. Cumming, through Macbeth—all the roles in Macbeth—and left him after the final dress rehearsal in possibly the biggest multiple-personality pile-up since Sybil.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to come because we were right in the middle of the creation process when the Tonys were happening,” Mr. Tiffany said. “If I wasn’t co-directing this with Andy Goldberg, I wouldn’t have been able to come—but, luckily, I was, I could, and I did. It was an absolutely fantastic night. The really great thing about New York theater life is that, if they like you, by God, they let you know!”

This one-man, 100-minute Macbeth—which premiered June 15 at Glasgow’s Tranway Theatre and will transfer to New York’s Rose Theatre July 5-14 as part of this year’s Lincoln Center Festival—is the result of “a meeting of three minds”: Mr. Cumming’s, Mr. Goldberg’s and his. And, yes, as a matter of fact, the actor did come first.

“Alan approached me at the beginning of last year and asked, ‘You fancy doing Macbeth?’ He had the idea that the actor playing Macbeth (i.e., him) and the actress playing Lady Macbeth could swap parts every other night since there’s so much language and talk about masculinity and femininity, so we did a reading in New York. A good friend and collaborator of mine, the New York-based director Andy Goldberg, came to the reading, and afterward we were talking. He said, ‘I always thought a one-man version of Macbeth set in a psychiatric hospital would be great.’ That idea got us both suddenly excited, so we took it to Alan, and he went for it.”

They were preaching to the converted. The first Shakespeare that Mr. Cumming ever read was Macbeth—plus, he hails from Aberfeldy, in Perthshire, Scotland, where the play’s place names (Bertram Woods, Dunsinane) are a hop, skip and jump from home. Such a contagious kinship to the characters almost insisted he play them all.

“You kinda have to see the show to see what Alan is doing—it’s incredibly fluid and subtle,” said Mr. Tiffany of the multitasking. “When we first meet him, he’s just arrived at the psychiatric hospital. Then, he starts to inhabit the characters and stories of Macbeth. As the production progresses, the reason he’s doing that becomes clear. There are no costume changes, no props as such. He’s trapped in this room.”

This is not Mssrs. Tiffany and Cumming’s first time at the gender-bending rodeo. Three years ago to the day of the Macbeth opening here, their National Theatre of Scotland version of The Bacchae bowed at the Rose and was a pretty rippin’ go at Euripides.

As Dionysus, that overheated hedonist and God of Good Times, Mr. Cumming made a rock-star entrance—handcuffed, dangling upside down by his ankles from the flies at the top of the theatre, wearing a kilt (and you know the old rumor about kilts).

Mr. Tiffany also tossed him the perfect one-liner when Dionysus overreacts and incinerates a whole set in a pique: “Too much?” he asks as an afterthought. (Fire marshals monitored the scene carefully, and a flash of heat warmed audience faces.)

Startling the audience is a specialty with Mr. Tiffany. In Black Watch, his stunner about a Scottish Army regiment in Iraq, soldiers make their entrance by ripping their way through a pub pool table. It won 22 awards, including an Olivier for his direction.

One of the people Mr. Tiffany specifically thanked in his Tony acceptance speech was Steven Hoggett, who, billed as “Associate Director,” kept the Black Watch cast in a sweaty state of perpetual motion with marches and military drills. Once gives him credit for “Movement,” and Peter and the Starcatcher calls him “Choreographer.”

“I’ve known Steven for 25 years,” said Mr. Tiffany. “Our kind of collaboration in life and work has been sustaining in so many inspirational and amazing ways. He’s incredible. His form of choreography and movement is, I think, truly innovative.

“Theater is so much more than just walking into an auditorium and sitting down and letting the curtain go up. It can be anything and anywhere, and I think we, as theater-makers, should start celebrating the ‘liveness’ of our form. Theater starts from the moment someone has the idea to go see a performance. Then, it’s about where to buy the ticket. It’s about how much that ticket is. It’s about what the marketing is, what the publicity is. It’s about where the nearest bar is to get a drink afterwards. Theater is a social experience from the first moment you hear about the possibility of going, and we need to celebrate every single element of that social experience. If that involves letting an audience go on stage during a big music session and have a drink from the set bar—and if that makes them more alert to the possibility of what that story might be or what theater can be—that excites me.”

The unifying theme of Mr. Tiffany’s shows is that they don’t unify at all. “They’re incredibly disparate,” he pointed out with some justified pride. “Theatre is a medium that can’t be digitalized. You actually have to buy a ticket and come into a space to see what we do. We really have to explore and exploit that sense of live experience.”

Seating was on the sidelines for Black Watch, bracing audiences for some theater different from what they’re used to. With Once, they go on stage and knock back a few. Macbeth has a comparable thing going. “I really like playing with audiences’ expectations, with their experience of what the event is,” Mr. Tiffany admitted. “Theater-makers should create work that is unique, that can only exist for an audience. Always, always, always think about your audience. The only thing you’re doing it for is an audience. Develop a generosity of storytelling and a desire to connect.”

editorial@observer.com

The National Theatre of Scotland’s John Tiffany, The Bacchae’s director, and the leading Scottish playwright David Greig, who adapted it from a literal translation by Ian Ruffell, are the immense talents responsible for the modern masterpiece about Scottish soldiers in the Iraq war, Black Watch. I sang the praises of that production unreservedly last season, singling out its fantastic imaginative daring and simplicity. (Black Watch is to return to St. Ann’s Warehouse in October.)

What would the proud and newly famous National Theatre of Scotland do with—or to—Euripides? How would the gifted Mr. Tiffany and his team reinvent The Bacchae for today? (Or as the jargon goes, make it relevant.)

I regret to report that they’ve blown it in very surprising ways. All productions are about the choices the director makes. From its sensational glam-rock opening onward, Mr. Tiffany has made the wrong choices. At least they’re bold. Two-thirds of The Bacchae has been turned into—of all things—a camp wannabe Broadway musical.

Look at that first laughably startling image—the rock star entrance of the Scottish actor Alan Cumming as Dionysus. Mr. Cumming is lowered upside down from the flies wearing a gold lamé kilt—a god from the sky, as it were—with his arms outstretched like Christ. And as he descends dramatically to earth with his backside to the audience, we’re offered a prolonged view of his bare bum.

Say what you like about Mr. Cumming, he’s never been shy. Rarely in the history of theater have so many of us seen an actor’s bum so often without sleeping with him. Mr. Cumming’s dimpled androgyny and giddy onstage flashing have become his popular trademark—from his insinuatingly bisexual Macheath in The Threepenny Opera to his creepily androgynous sprite with glitter nipples and a swastika on his bum in Cabaret. (I didn’t see his recent Trigorin in The Seagull, alas.)

“So, Thebes. I’m back!” he announces happily when his Dionysus has landed and performed a slightly compromising somersault for us. “Man? Woman?” he asks the audience directly. “It was a close-run thing. I chose man. What do you think?”

Och, it’s only Alan Cumming! He’s the bisexual Braveheart of Thebes who bears a fleeting resemblance to Fiona Shaw. He conveys impish, winking “naughtiness”—not danger, least of all terror. His preening pixie hedonism is unthreateningly camp. This charming man wouldn’t harm a fly. Mr. Cumming—as opposed to the avenging god Dionysus—wants to be liked (and usually is)

HIS FLIRTY DIONYSUS lite defines the simplistic production. But is The Bacchae essentially about worshiping sex, glamour and booze—as the director told The Village Voice? That would confine the great play merely to a romp followed by a hangover. What happened to the tragedy’s complex themes? Murderous inflexibility and political opposites, the escalating danger of absolute points of view, subversive instinct versus rational control.

Even on its own terms, the new production overplays its hand. Take Euripides’ bizarre pivotal scene in which Dionysus persuades his mortal enemy, Pentheus, King of Thebes and warlike advocate of law and order, to wear a dress. The idea is that Pentheus, disguised as a Maenad, will be able to spy on the secret rites of the orgiastic women in the hills (presumably before slaughtering them). The notoriously difficult scene is obviously comic—but is it simply, as Mr. Cumming’s Dionysus explains in a glib aside, “When young men get drunk, don’t they just love to put on dresses?”

Predictably, the production plays this famous scene for broad laughs. Lost in translation is any sense of nuance, mystery, temptation or moral ambiguity. Instead, a campy fashion parade takes place with the delighted Dionysus acting as fussy dresser, an André Leon Talley to the increasingly interested Pentheus. It’s The Bacchae meets La Cage Aux Folles.

“No, a bit clashy!” Dionysus exclaims, rejecting one of the dresses. “Something’s missing, yes? A wee accessory, maybe …”

Pentheus exits—the better to return with a grand entrance. “Come out!” Dionysus calls after him. “You know you want to!” (Geddit?) The demure Pentheus then comes out in a bright green party frock (with accessories). “How do I look?” he asks.

Euripides—where are you now? (Having a wee breakdown.)

THE SHOWBIZZY CONCEPT of Mr. Tiffany’s production stops well short, in fact, of the truly modern. With Dionysus’ nine black backup singers functioning as a chic gospel/R&B Chorus, the production’s era is nostalgic Motown. Gospel versions of Greek classics aren’t new, though I suspect they may be new to Mr. Tiffany. (Gospel at Colonus became the hit gospel version of Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus at Colonus 20 years ago.) The Supremes are among this Bacchae’s motifs (one enjoyable “homage” is a blatant steal from Dreamgirls).

The retro atmosphere turns the show into an accidental period piece. The Bacchae was staged frequently in America during the turbulent 1960s, when the wars between the radical counterculture of Dionysus and the repressive, uncomprehending status quo of Pentheus made urgent contemporary sense. But can it work today, when no significant youth movement or counterculture exists? Can a modern version of Euripides smash through the safe, smug, pervasive middle ground and speak truth to us?

Mr. Tiffany and Co. haven’t found the answer. They’ve cr
eated a number of memorable moments—the tulips that descend from the heavens smack on a grave; the blind oracle and king’s uncle tap-dancing like pickled, vaudevillian geriatrics; the firewall coup de théâtre that burns down Pentheus’ palace and threatens to scorch the astonished audience; the brief blinding light, a vision of the divine.

But tricks and showbiz leave the tragic grandeur of the play behind. The Bacchae’s savage conclusion arrives like an unwelcome intruder with the butchered, dismembered remains of Pentheus. The fine performances of Ewan Hooper’s grieving grandfather soaked in his beloved grandson’s blood, together with Paola Dionisotti as Pentheus’ deranged mother and unwitting, exultant accomplice in his murder, only emphasize the campy superficiality of all that’s gone before.

This is the third production I’ve seen of late, incidentally, that concludes with a severed head. Two Macbeths and now The Bacchae. The heads don’t look real to me. They all look like Patrick Stewart. Dripping with fake blood, absurdly shiny and plastic, they could be on sale at Madame Tussauds. Severed heads should be bagged and not seen. It’s time to bag them onstage.

jheilpern@observer.com